Vancouver Whitecaps face selection dilemma

Martin Rennie must feel as though he’s in the middle of a particularly complex game of Rock, Paper, Scissors” at the moment; constantly deciding his own moves based on his assumptions of what his opponent will do.

And tonight’s game against the Montreal Impact is perhaps the most mind-scratching (it’s like head-scratching but deeper) of all his possible permutations.

His first consideration is that this is the first leg of a two-legged contest, which means that the Whitecaps don’t necessarily have to win the game and they don’t necessarily even have to tie it. If they come away from Stade Saputo within a goal of Montreal then they are still very much in contention to lift the Amway Canadian Championship (aka “The Voyageurs Cup”, aka “CONCACAF Qualifying”, aka “The Thing That the Whitecaps Just Can’t Seem to Win”).

That wiggle room with regard to the result and the fact that his team face a home game against the Portland Timbers in MLS (aka “The Cascadia Cup”, aka “The Insert Brand Name Here Cup”, aka “The Thing That the Whitecaps Just Can’t Seem to Win”) on Saturday means that we can once again expect changes.

Andy O’Brien and Nigel Reo-Coker could probably both do with a break but, given their importance to the team so far, it’s hard to see Rennie leaving them out. Everything other position though is up for grabs.

At least two out of three of the goalkeeper and full-backs should change and in the midfield it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the energy of Matt Watson brought in to augment Davidson, Reo-Coker and Koffie.

That leaves the coach with a solid midfield, but little in the way of creativity, which could lead him to give two goal hero Russell Teibert a start playing just behind the forward (a position he excelled in earlier in the season) and it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see Tommy Heinemann in as the lone striker.

Heinemann’s style is prosaic at best but he has shown himself to be a hard worker who can cause defences problems merely by his presence on the field.

The other option is for Rennie to go for speed.

He could therefore choose to Leave Koffie rested for Portland and play a front three of Mattocks, Hurtado and Manneh; a lineup that would give the Impact pause for thought when they were pushing forward but looks worryingly naïve when it comes to defensive duties.

Or he could decide that this competition isn’t important enough to risk too many of his preferred starters and opt to field a genuine second-string team in the hope that Montreal do the same (that would be the wrong decision but it’s still a possibility).

In conclusion, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that we haven’t got a clue which players Martin Rennie will select and that none of us are any wiser than we were at the start of this article but we are, unfortunately, a little bit nearer to death.

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